Characters Of The Reformation

9O CHARACTERS OF THE REFORMATION
made the Bishops understand that they were
nobodies compared with himself, he sent his
officials throughout their dioceses adjudicating
and settling and punishing and the rest, as though
he were a universal bishop whose power super-
seded that of all others. Yet all the time Cromwell
was only a layman.
Within a year of Cromwell's having worked
the schism with Rome—that is, in 1535—he
began two things side by side. One was a reign
of terror, which was inaugurated by the arrest
and at last the execution of very highly placed
people, laymen and clerics, who withstood the
schism; the other was the dissolution of the
monasteries.
It is with this last activity that Cromwell's
name will always be chiefly associated. He was
the direct author of the great orgy of loot which
follows thenceforward for the better part of a
lifetime, and his motive in this move was personal
gain. The whole of his life had been devoted to
acquiring wealth, usually by the basest means,
and that sufficiently accounts for all that he did
in the matter of the religious houses.
He began by suppressing the smaller houses—
that is, those whose incomes were less than
what we should call to-day about five
thousand pounds a year. These smaller houses